Secretly mapping the sea floor

NGA map for Cuba
with data collected by U.S. Navy

From SantaCruzSentinel

The oceans of Earth host creatures as large as Blue whales and microscopic as plankton.
Beneath the surface is a landscape of mountains, valleys and plains.

 Monterey Bay Submarine canyon

The Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary between Marin County and northern San Luis Obispo County, for instance, has the Monterey Bay Submarine canyon that plunges a mile beneath the bay floor and the Davidson Seamount, nearly 7,500 feet tall though its peak is 4,000 feet below the ocean's surface.

Only about 10 percent of the ocean floor is mapped with the precision that dry land is.
Anyone with access to the internet can find maps developed with methods that have evolved in sophistication since the 1800s, from line and sinker to sophisticated sonar.
Some work has been done by private institutions and government agencies charged with ocean management.

Russian nautical chart
 NGA equivalent charts in the Marine GeoGarage

But some was done in secret by the U.S. military including the period known as the "cold war" between the U.S. and the Soviet Union that started after World War II and ended when the former collapsed in 1991.
The Navy's involvement started in 1849, producing maps of the North Atlantic by 1853, and international charts that were published in 1905.
The military's mapping slowed during World War II but was re-engaged in the late 1940s.
Sea floor maps provided strategic information for both the U.S. and Soviet Union in the case of, for example, submarines which were equipped with long-range nuclear missiles.

1945 World War II (WWII) U. S. Navy Map or Nautical Chart of Bombay Harbor, India
NGA chart Mumbaï in the Marine GeoGarage

Terri Morgan, an author and journalist who writes occasionally for the Sentinel, credited the work done in secret by her late father Joseph Morgan and others in the Navy as advancing our understanding of the ocean and the sea floor.
"Since most of the projects my dad was involved in were during the cold war, a lot of his work was classified," she said.
"So it's difficult to find a lot to verify the family stories. But the gist of it all is that the Navy did do a lot of ocean floor mapping during the cold war."

Physiographic Diagram, Atlantic Ocean 
(Heezen, Bruce C.; Tharp, Marie)

After Joseph Morgan participated in the effort to in map the Atlantic he was transferred to the Pacific where his focus was on tracking Soviet submarines.
"There was a series of naval stations along the coast, including Centerville Beach, where he was stationed in 1968 and 1969, Point Sur, and Coos Bay, Oregon that were involved in the same project," Terri Morgan remembered.

 NIMA (NGA) international chart in the Marine GeoGarage

Joseph Morgan retired as a captain in the Navy in 1974.
His daughter said he embarked on a second career as a professor at the University of Hawaii and worked on several books.
"His works included The Atlas for Marine Policy in the Southeast Asian Sea which includes maps that focus on the seafloor and not the continents," she told me.
"He also worked on the Ocean Yearbook. He never lost his fascination with the ocean."

"Like most military innovations, war was a good motivator for advancing technology," she said.
The internet, which itself has origins in a Department of Defense project, made large amounts of data readily available worldwide.
The internet search engine Google launched Google Earth which now includes sea floor images based on work done by people such as Joseph Morgan.

To learn how sea floor mapping has evolved over the years, go to NOAA

Links :

• Extending modern cartography to the ocean depths: military patronage, Cold War priorities, and the Heezen–Tharp mapping project, 1952–1959  
• GeoGarage blog : Red October for real: maps suggest Soviet subs cruised Canadian Arctic

Australia AHS update in the Marine GeoGarage

Aus 68 Approaches to Cape Preston

2 charts have been added in the Marine GeoGarage (AHS update 08/07/2013)

• Aus66  Australia West Coast - Western Australia - Barrow Island - Town Point
• Aus68  Australia West Coast - Western Australia - Approaches to Cape Preston

7 charts have been updated in the Marine GeoGarage (AHS update 08/07/2013)

• Aus238  Australia East Coast - Queensland - Brisbane River - Lytton Reach to Victoria Bridge
• Aus200  Australia East Coast - New South Wales - Port Jackson
• Aus203  Australia East Coast - New South Wales - Port Jackson(Western Sheet) Parramatta and Lane Cove Rivers
• Aus134  Australia South Coast - South Australia - Approaches to Port Lincoln
• Aus265  Australia East Coast - Queensland - Approaches to Port Alma
• Aus294  Australia - North Coast - Torres Strait - Endeavour Strait
• Aus319  Australia North West Coast - Western Australia - Penguin Shoal to Browse Island

Today 462 AHS raster charts (780 including sub-charts) are included in the Marine GeoGarage viewer. 
Note : AHS updates their nautical charts with corrections published in:

• Australian Notices to Mariners

Navigating 18th-century science: Board of Longitude archive digitised

 This first film in a series of three (see at the end of this article), introduces the Board of Longitude and the 18th century search for an accurate way of finding longitude at sea.
The papers in the Board's archive record scientific endeavour, fateful voyages, bitter feuds and lifetimes of commitment to a common cause.

From TheGuardian (Rebekah Higgitt)

Last Thursday the complete archive of the Board of Longitude was being launched online, with stories of innovation, exploration and endeavour - and much more than just John Harrison 

  Design for a marine chair submitted to the Board of Longitude

Source: Cambridge University Library

Today Lord Rees will be launching the digitised archive of the Board of Longitude at Cambridge University Library.
Stuffed full of the correspondence and work of those who preceded him as Astronomer Royal, it also contains letters and papers of artisans, inventors, expeditionary astronomers and maritime explorers.

For those not familiar with the story of the 18th-century search for a means to determine longitude at sea, this video, gives an introduction to the project and the story. 

The digitisation project is a collaboration between CUL and the National Maritime Museum, funded by JISC, and is closely allied to an AHRC-funded project on the history of the Board of Longitude that brings together researchers from the NMM and History and Philosophy of Science department in Cambridge.

This association has meant that as well as digitising 48,596 pages from the archives and libraries at Cambridge and NMM, the content is supported by links to relevant object records at the Museum, summaries of all and transcriptions of some of the files and essays on key figures, places, institutions, objects and events.

Written by the project researchers, there is enough text there for a couple of PhDs (at least) and a really useful resource for users of the site.
I was the laggard who has only contributed one essay so far, on Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne.
He was, though, an extremely significant figure both for the longitude story and in this project, which also includes selections from Maskelyne's archive from the Royal Observatory and his personal papers held now at the NMM.

While historical researchers will undoubtedly find many ways to start digging into the archive, for those newer to the game there are, on top of the summaries and essays, resources for schools and some selected stories lifted from the archive.
The content can take the reader to the observatory at Greenwich, meetings at the Admiralty, artisan workshops of London and the South Seas.

 

William Wales' map of Easter Island, from Cook's Second Voyage.

Source: Cambridge University Library 

Key Stage 2 pupils will, we hope, learn about Captain Cook's voyages and Key Stage 3 will be able to think about inventors and enterprise.

For those who feel they are familiar with the story of longitude, having read about John Harrison and his sea clocks in Dava Sobel's Longitude, they will find there is much more to explore.
As my NMM colleague, Richard Dunn says,

The archive places the familiar story of Harrison in its richer context.
He was a crucial figure but the story is much broader.
It takes in the development of astronomy, exploration and technological innovation and creativity during the period of the Industrial Revolution, the work of the first government body devoted to scientific matters, and public reactions to a challenge many considered hopeless.

Simon Schaffer, who leads the research project, adds that

The longitude story is a spectacular example of expert disagreement and public participation.
As well as attracting the greatest scientific minds of the day, the board enticed people who belong to one of the most important traditions in British society; the extreme eccentric.
Thus while there may be interest in reading the full story of the Board's dealings with Harrison, eyes are likely to be caught by what were damned by the archive's 19th-century compilers as "Impractical schemes".
Some of these are real green ink stuff, with perpetual motion and squaring the circle bound into the seemingly intractable problem of finding longitude.  

Proposal for finding longitude by determining the ship's rate of sailing.

Source: Cambridge University Library

However, there are many other schemes that, while they did not come to fruition, were based on sound ideas.

These included improvements to dead reckoning - the educated estimate of position that was not displaced by chronometers until the 20th century - or ways to steady an observer sufficiently to allow them to use Jupiter's satellites as a celestial timekeeper (the standard means of determining longitude on land).

In its later life, the Board supported the two successful methods of finding longitude at sea - chronometer and lunar distance - and broadened its remit into other fields.

Thus those who explore the digital archive will also land on geomagnetic research, pendulum experiments measuring gravity, the search for the North-West Passage and a young Michael Faraday pulled in to investigate ways to improve optical glass.

And much more besides - go on, dive in!

The Board of Longitude sent astronomers on voyages of exploration to test methods of navigation and help make better maps.
This is the second film of the series and looks at some of the techniques they used to make maps and introduces the story of William Gooch, a young astronomer who met an untimely end.

Making Greenwich the centre of the world

This is the final film in the series and tells the story of how the Nautical Almanac was produced thanks to work of a band of human computers.

This publication helped sailors find their position at sea.

Links :

• GeoGarage blog :  Longitude - The story of a lone genius who solved the greatest scientific problem of his time / Crossing the antimeridian (the 180th degree meridian) / Opinion: How the Prime Meridian changed the world
  

On one deep breath free divers capture beauty of ocean's depths

From NBCnews

One breath at a time, husband and wife freedivers Christina and Eusebio Saenz de Santamaria explore the depths of the ocean.
Without traditional scuba gear, the divers rely on holding their breath for several minutes at a time, pushing the limits of the human body.
Christina and Eusebio’s passion for the water began as children.
For Christina, it was inspired growing up on the shores of Sydney with beach excursions spent swimming in the ocean.
For Eusebio, it was a fascination that developed with Jacques Cousteau’s weekly Spanish editions of ‘The Undersea World.’
“When taking underwater photos while freediving and when 'fun' freediving we are only underwater for up to 4 minutes for each dive. However while freedive training our dives can be up to 6 minutes for myself and up to 8 minutes for my husband,” writes Christina in an email to NBC News.

Eusebio is able to explore the ocean at depths of 100 meters (328 feet) and Christina up to 80 meters (260 feet).
The couple just arrived in Honduras, and over their next two months in the Caribbean they plan to break their current depth records.

Kai Lenny's Kite Board vs. Oracle Team USA's AC72

Kai Lenny's $1,500 Kite Board vs ORACLE TEAM USA's $15 million catamaran...

"It's like bringing a knife to a gun fight," said ORACLE TEAM USA grinder Matt Mitchell.

Those were the comments of Jimmy Spithill, the skipper of ORACLE TEAM USA and the defenders of the America's Cup.
The question was whether kite board champion Kai Lenny can outrace the new 72-foot catamaran of ORACLE TEAM USA.
Pink slips were on the line when Lenny put his $1,500 board up against the $15 million boat recently on San Francisco Bay.

On the same course that will host the 34th America's Cup in September, the two sides engaged in a bridge-to-bridge battle between the Golden Gate and Bay Bridge.


Kai Lenny got a significant jump out of the starting gate, launching his kite and harnessing the power of the winds to propel himself at 20 knots across the water (23 mph).

This caught ORACLE TEAM USA off guard at first, before they found their rhythm and cranked it up to 30 knots (34 mph) to blow by the kite board.